Friday, 16 September 2022
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| today's route |
I heard on the radio that coastal western Alaska is in serious flooding danger. I'm sure people always think of mountains when they think of Alaska, and there are certainly plenty of those. But much of the northern and western parts of Alaska are really flat, and I can see that heavy storm surges could send water a long way inland. And for the most part, those communities are in the low-income bracket and wouldn't have a lot of resources available in emergencies. It's a tough life out there, but the people who live there are at least equally as tough.
Today I was driving through a lot of rural countryside, and at one point I passed 2 driveways guarded by dogs lying at the entrances, and then 1 driveway with 2 cats ditto.
I was in the Red Lake Indian Reservation - you can see all the pink on the map above - and all the signs with names of lakes and creeks and towns were in both English and a Native language.
The road followed the edge of Lower Red Lake for quite a long way. Lower and Upper Red Lakes aren't separate bodies of water but, as you can see from the map, connected by a narrow channel. Red Lake is Minnesota's largest lake that's entirely within the state.
I came to the town of Grygla (pronounced GREE glah (I asked)), pop. 180, with the slogan "The Biggest Town of Its Size," which I think is hilarious. At the gas station, the woman gave me general directions to a park where I could walk Dexter, but those directions turned out not to be any good - except, I suppose, if you were actually from here and knew what she was talking about. Instead, I found the alleged parking area for the airport (according to the sign), which was actually just a bed of gravel large enough for me to turn the RV around in. Of course, the airport was mostly just a landing strip, so I suppose the gravel was all they needed.
We parked there and Dext and I walked down the road a piece to the town's small playground/campground and back. At the airport, I saw an actual telephone booth with a pay telephone and a phone book in it. I'm not sure it worked, though, because the directions said not to put in money until I'd gotten a dial tone and dialed the number - and I didn't hear a dial tone.
I kept hearing people on the radio using the term "DFL" when the context would suggest they were talking about Democrats. But I never heard them actually say "Democrats," just this "DFL." I finally looked it up and learned it stands for Democratic-Farmer-Labor, and the combined party has been in existence since about WWII. Which just goes to show our political system is infinitely elastic.
Speaking of which, I also heard on the radio that Minnesotans are used to having divided government; since 1990 there's been only 1 2-year period where 1 political party held both the state house and senate as well as the governorship. That was in 2012, and in 2014 MN went back to having each party controlling at least one of those 3 bodies. MN also has an active 3rd-party movement - remember Jesse Ventura being elected governor in 1998 from the Reform Party? And just to round out this political discussion, the radio also informed me that MN is known for having the highest percentage of voter turnout in the country; in 2020 80% of voters cast ballots.
I passed fields of sunflowers and lots of bee boxes.
And I came to Roseau, pop. 2,633, calling themselves the Birthplace of Polaris. As in the Polaris brand of ATVs and snowmobiles. Apparently, this really is where the company started back in 1954 and it's still the company's largest manufacturing facility.
I was staying in the city's campground, which seemed pleasant enough, but even on my hotspot the internet reception was almost nonexistent. Very frustrating.
It started raining during the evening, and at times the rain was so heavy it actually scared Dext, and startled me and Lily. I'm glad we were safe in a campground with an electrical hookup.
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